page 136 / After the stage direction: Pause. — And we will forget him, and he will forget us . . . Time will do its work . . .
page 136 / After: and the General’s lady . . . — Today I am still yours, but tomorrow . . . What will things be like tomorrow?
page 136 / After: (Lies down on the sofa.) — Tomorrow I’ll be a new man . . . Interesting!
page 136 / After: ignoramus! — What power keeps you at home?
page 137 / Replace: Sergey and Sofya are behaving
with: Sergey and Sofya have both suddenly come down with a fit of bickering and are behaving
page 137 / After: You are the little dunderhead. — You’re a very great fool, Mishenka!
page 137 / After the stage direction: Pause. — A general’s lady to end all general’s ladies!
page 138 / After: like God’s image, sir . . . — A Christian, I’ve served God and Tsar faithful and true for twenty-five years, sir . . .
Pause
I swore an oath faithful and true on the Holy Bible . . .
page 140 / After: like a holy relic. — You’ll impose a fine. It’s about time I was taught a good lesson. Don’t forgive me, don’t forgive me for any reason, even though I humbly beg your forgiveness . . .
page 141 / After: a woman’s punished me . . . — It’s about time, they’ve been pampering me for far too long . . .
page 141 / Before: I was free — Another day or so left, I’d be going to trial . . . Triletsky would make a speech to the point. Grekova would cry her eyes out at the trial . . . After the trial peace and drunkenness, of course . . . Ech! . . .
page 141 / After: poor Voinitsevs! — Your friend and eccentric Platonov cost you dear . . . When will you sic the law on me? . . .
page 142 / After: Everything . . . — Especially about the things you’ll learn about in the not too distant future and which . . . I would ask you not to mention, if you know them already . . .
page 146 / After: and the scoundrel Platonov — don’t look for him when he disappears, don’t ask about him
page 146 / After: fade into the background . . . — Until the time when the name Platonov will be only a hollow sound for you, until he is obscured in your memory by a dense fog, until the time when we will never meet again!
page 148 / After: I’m a drunkard, Platonov . . . — When my General was alive, I drank an awful lot . . . Drank, drank, drank . . . And I shall go on drinking!
page 149 / After: and I won’t see you! — I’m a goner!
page 149 / After: A new life . . . Get angry, don’t get angry, but . . .
page 156 / After: I’ll make a man of him! — I shall show him the way, I shall teach him how to redeem my sinful life and the life of my fathers! Day and night I shall sanctify him . . .
page 156 / After: your delight! — Nikolay Mikhailov Platonov will go far!
page 156 / After: You’re laughing . . . — I’ve tickled your maternal vanity . . .
page 158 / After: I’m really sorry! — I’ll stay with you . . .
page 159 / After: My God! — (Bites the pillow.)
page 159 / Replace: (Lies on the sofa.)
with:(Looks out the window.)
page 159 / Replace: VOINITSEV enters and stops in the doorway. . . . can’t manage to beat you down!
with: She’s getting in the cart.
Pause.
After all this is my wife, my family, warmth . . . Where is she going? What will become of it? Incredible! (Shouts.) Help her get in! What are you looking at? (Quietly.) She’s covered her face with a kerchief and is looking over here out of the corner of her eye . . . She’s driven off . . . How will it all end, I should like to know? What more is to come? It’s dreadful! (Shouts.) He’s here!?
Pause.
He’s here . . . Where’s he going? Here. No, no, not here . . . Why is he coming to me? (Quickly lies down.) He’s taking a walk . . . This is his usual time for taking a walk . . . Are you trembling? Aaaah . . . (Lends an ear.) Anyway, I’d better get ready . . . I’ll face him boldly and ask no quarter . . . I’ll let him call me names, cover me with abuse . . . Footsteps? His? Hm . . . I’m sleeping, I’m sleeping . . . (Covers his face.) He’s coming . . . What a pity the door isn’t locked.
VOINITSEV appears in a window.
PLATONOV. He walked up to the window . . . Maybe it isn’t him!
VOINITSEV (in the window). He isn’t here? Strolling somewhere in the forest, dreaming about happiness and convincing the whole universe of how right he is? (Leans over the windowsill.) Your happiness doesn’t belong to you! What’s to be done? (Thinks.) I’ll go inside and write him a challenge to a duel . . . He prides himself on his chivalrous actions, now let him come and fight! I’ll offer him satisfaction . . . I won’t give her up to him without a fight, I won’t, even if all rights, opinions and convictions put together took her away from me! Whether he’s right or not — has nothing to do with me! I can’t discuss it! I’m suffering and . . . I want revenge! That’s what! I’ve gone crazy!
PLATONOV coughs slightly.
VOINITSEV (on seeing Platonov). Is that him? He’s asleep . . . Wouldn’t you know . . . He can sleep! If the rat felt even a tenth part of the humiliation inflicted on me, he wouldn’t sleep! (Looks around.) Right now . . . For the first time in my life I feel hatred and . . . I’ll kill. Right now . . . Right now . . . (Raises a dagger.)
PLATONOV (jumps up). Get back!
VOINITSEV quickly leaps back out of the window and hides.
SCENE X
PLATONOV (alone).
I beg of you! For heaven’s sake! What are you doing? Get back! I’ll kill myself, if my death is what you’re after! (Stamps his feet.) Get away! O wretched, pathetic man! . . . Is that him? Vanished? (Slaps himself on the head.) He was trying to kill me! He, Sergey Voinitsev, a cultured, honorable, noble, loving man! It’s smashed, cracked everything that I believed in, that I loved! The head God gave me is cursed! I’ve brought this sensitive soul to the point of murder! I did it! I was disastrous for people, people were disastrous for me! (Sobs.) Keep away from people!
page 159 / After: not overly talented . . . — How will I end? It’s common knowledge . . . If I don’t die of consumption, I’ll end by becoming a mystic.
page 160 / Replace: (whistles)
with: (sobs)
page 160 / After: Stands to reason . . . — (Sobs.) Damn you.
page 160 / After: I’ll go at once . . . — stage direction: Pause.
page 161 / After: filthy . . . — (Weeps.)
ACT FOUR
page 162 / Before: SOFYA YEGOROVNA. Don’t get so excited! —
KATYA. He ain’t nowheres, mistress!
SOFYA YEGOROVNA. Where did you look for him?
KATYA. Everywheres, everywheres I could . . . At the schoolhouse I poked my nose in every corner. Doors and windows all broke in, but he ain’t there . . . I even went down cellar . . . A carpenter was sitting by the cellar, I asked him whether he seen him . . . and he says I ain’t seen ‘im. I thought if I go through the woods . . .
SOFYA YEGOROVNA. Did you stop by the priest’s?
KATYA. I sure did . . . The holy father says that they ain’t seen Mikhail Vasilich a whole week . . . Went by the deacon’s . . . Went by Aleksey Makarych the clerk’s, and he don’t know . . . I figured the gent might be taking a hike in the woods . . . so I went through the woods . . . I looked and looked . . .
page 163 / After: Go out again, Katya! — Go back to the holy father, to that carpenter . . .
page 164 / After: He doesn’t love me! — All right! He doesn’t love me . . . Otherwise he wouldn’t torture me this way . . . Maybe the school inspector called him to town for some reason . . . No, no . . . He didn’t come yesterday, doesn’t come today . . . (Gets up.)
page 166 / After: look down your nose at me like that! — My mind can’t grasp it! It’s horrible to remember! You know what happened yesterday? Yesterday I almost killed Platonov! I almost cut his throat! If he hadn’t woken up, I would have killed him! I crept over to him with a knife, like a highway robber, to a sleeping, unarmed man!
SOFYA YEGOROVNA. When?
VOINITSEV. Last night! He saw me!
SOFYA YEGOROVNA (sits and covers her face). What happened?
VOINITSEV. I wanted to kill him because he stole my wife! I didn’t want to let him have you without a fight! If he hadn’t woke up, I would have killed him outright with that damned dagger!
page 166 / After: Where is he? — Did he get scared of your knife and run away? He can’t have run away!
page 166 / Before: Where is he? — You were willing to kill him when he was asleep, why didn’t you kill him when he woke up? Stab him in the back? A man awake is more dangerous than a man asleep?
page 173 / After: Good morning, Sergey Pavlovich! — Ah, you can’t imagine!
page 174 / After: I’m not wrong! — (Slaps himself on the forehead.)
page 174 / After: I should shoot myself. — (Sobs.)
Pause.
page 175 / Replace: do not . . . kill yourself! . . . Grief will do you in . . .
with: but don’t sully your hands with a crime . . . Are you the one to be killed? You? A bitter insult! God will see that I believe in your unhappiness and that it makes me no less unhappy than you! Why be the cause of another crime? You want revenge? Hm . . . But revenge is stupid, isn’t it, as stupid as a savage! What would become of you if you succeeded in . . . a murder? You . . . you would be ruined! In any case murder is the lowest ebb of all human vulgarity! Now, let’s assume, I did something despicable . . . Why should you defile yourself, yourself, for that?
Pause.
Nothing to say? Hm . . . You don’t understand me . . . In any case, if your thirst for revenge is that great, if the desire for vengeance has got the upper hand over your human dignity, if grief has disabled your reason because you always were a reasonable man, then tell me . . .
page 175 / Replace: VOINITSEV. I don’t want anything.
with: VOINITSEV. I want you to.
PLATONOV. Fine. I’ll shoot myself. I’ll shoot myself with pleasure. (Claps him on the shoulder.) Cultivated people aren’t worth a good goddam . . . It’s no great honor to live with such gee . . . gentlemen . . .
page 176 / After: bother maman? — I came to a cultivated, humane opponent of capital punishment to advise him and ask him not to kill . . . Ech! The lower you stoop, the further you have to turn away your face!
page 176 / After: The end has come! — Now a person can creep in with a knife, a person can put a bullet through his brain, insult a man, insult all holy feeling!
page 176 / Replace: since you left!
with: you jumped through the window! If you had seen me that night, you with your thirst for revenge would have had a gullet full of it!
page 177 / Before: I am sorry that I spoke to you — The hell—with you!
page 177 / Replace: ANNA PETROVNA (wrings her hands).
with: ANNA PETROVNA (runs over to Voinitsev). Serzhel . . . What is he . . . what was he referring to? You were with him yesterday?
Pause.
Speak! Don’t torment me, speak!
VOINITSEV. There’s no need . . .
ANNA PETROVNA (shakes him by the shoulders). Speak! What happened?
VOINITSEV. Spare me . . . You at least should have some compassion!
ANNA PETROVNA. Speak!
Pause.
VOINITSEV. I wanted to kill him . . . I crept in to him with a knife . . . If he hadn’t woke up . . . He was asleep . . .
ANNA PETROVNA. Aah . . . Now I get it . . . And after that you dared to call
him a bastard? Fine! What’ll become of this, what’ll become of this . . . (Wrings her hands.)
page 178 / After: insult people! — To creep up on a sleeping man with a knife and then . . . then to call him a bastard, and kick him out! . . . You’re not worth this man’s tiniest finger, you little brat!
page 179 / After: Go on! — God grant we shall make peace somehow . . .
page 180 / After: I don’t need anything! — I’m worn out, Sofya, honest to God, I’m worn out! There’s a lot of you, but I’m on my own . . . Take pity on me, please!